2007 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize Winner has been awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine
The 2007 Warren Alpert Foundation prize winner has been awarded the Nobel Prize. According to the Nobel Assembly, Dr. zur Hausen was awarded the prize for work that “went against current dogma and postulated that oncogenic human papilloma virus (HPV) caused cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women. He realized that HPV-DNA could exist in a non-productive state in the tumors, and should be detectable by specific searches for viral DNA. He found HPV to be a heterogeneous family of viruses. Only some HPV types cause cancer. His discovery has led to characterization of the natural history of HPV infection, an understanding of mechanisms of HPV-induced carcinogenesis and the development of prophylactic vaccines against HPV acquisition.”
Click here to read more about Dr. zur Hausen’s award on the Nobel Prize website.
The Warren Alpert Foundation congratulates Dr. zur Hausen on this remarkable achievement and his profound contributions to the medical community.
Harald zur Hausen and Lutz Gissmann discovered that specific types of human papillomavirus (HPV) cause cancer of the cervix. This work began in 1972, after zur Hausen and colleagues failed to find genetic sequences for herpes simplex virus 2 in human cervical cancer and started to analyze the possible role of genital tract HPV in this disease. The research was subsequently bolstered by studies from cytologists providing evidence that an HPV was present in cervical dysplasia, a precursor lesion to cervical cancer that is the basis of the Pap smear.
Two years later, in 1974, Lutz Gissmann joined the zur Hausen group as a PhD student. Together, the scientists helped establish the heterogeneity of the papillomavirus family. Based on the subsequent isolation of papillomavirus types in genital warts and laryngeal papillomatosis, two of zur Hausen’s later students were able to clone and partially characterize the most prevalent virus types in cervical cancer, HPV 16 (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 80, 3812, 1983) and HPV 18 (EMBO Journal 3, 1151, 1984). These two seminal studies included Gissmann, who played a critical role in directing the molecular biological techniques that were central to the investigations. In 1983, the scientists identified HPV 16 in precursor lesions of genital cancer, and in 1985, they revealed the genetic organization of HPV DNA in cervical cancer cells and the active transcription of HPV in the same kind of cells.
HPV16 and HPV18 are responsible for 70 percent of cervical cancer worldwide. From a global perspective, the disease ranks second in cancer incidence among women, and in many parts of Africa, Asia, and South America, it is the most frequent cancer among females. The work of many scientists followed the groundbreaking studies of zur Hausen and Gissmann, which established a role for HPVs in cancer. The development of preventive vaccines derive from the researchers’ initial studies as well as subsequent contributions.
2011 Prize Honors Bioengineering Luminaries Alain F. Carpentier, MD, PhD and Robert S. Langer, ScD
Nominations are closed for 2012.
Please check back this spring for The Call for Nominations for the 2013 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize